Conky: how to make conky consistenly pass clicks to the root window #320

[Lew-Rockwell-Fan]

"how to make conky consistenly pass clicks to the root window #320" was closed, but the issue is unchanged, as far as I can see. Still fails in much the same way as I reported in the beginning about 2 years ago, under the same circumstances except for an updated environment to the current LTS version of Uubuntu. I've made more detailed comments in that thread.

[lasers]

320 was closed due to a month of inactivity after an inquiry. That and a possibly resolved PR.

I would suggest you to get familiar with git bisect and find the bad 1.10.0 commit to really get the ball rolling for this issue. I'm not sure if this is even feasible because you could be running into compilation issues, depreciation issues, etc between 1.9.0 to 1.10.0. You need to use pre-1.10.0 syntax config too.

If you can checkout + compile old 1.9.0 binary and clicks to root window feature worked for you there, then talk to me. We can try and git bisect this together if necessary. Otherwise, I will have no idea what I'm supposed to look for.

[lasers]

1.10.8-1 still fails for me in Ubuntu 18.04, bionic, the current LTS release, in an environment otherwise the same as I described above (plain Openbox under X, amd_64, etc.).

1.9.0-4 still works fine.

git clone https://github.com/brndnmtthws/conky
git checkout 1.9.0

Compiling from source 1.9 and earlier versions [link]

If you can compile 1.9 okay, try git bisect next to find a bad commit.

[lasers]

I just check this thread occasionally when I have some reason to suspect progress has been made.

No progress has been made for years. Only you can find the bad commit. :-)

[Lew-Rockwell-Fan]

Honestly, 1.9.0-4 works fine for me. If it quits working, or if I'm convinced it has horrible security weaknesses that will expose my plan for World Conquest or out me as a Russian Spy (there are 2 under every bed you know) I might do that. Sorry, but right now, there are other things that need my time more. This isn't really inconveniencing me much. I just dropped by because I had new information of a negative sort since I'm running 18.04 now, and nothing changed. I'm not cracking a whip at you, just dropping off info FYI.

[sidambhire]

Any progress on this bug guys? Does anyone has any idea what exactly is wrong so that it can be fixed?

[lasers]

Any progress on this bug guys?

No progress. It's up to anyone to look into this.

Does anyone has any idea what exactly is wrong so that it can be fixed?

I suggested trying git bisect to find a bad commit first before trying anything else. The offending commit could be something trivial. May have to use old distro where currently unsupported packages are available there... along with pre-1.0 conky... which could make it hard to git bisect.

[Lew-Rockwell-Fan]

May have to use old distro where currently unsupported packages are available there

In Ubuntu at least, the last version that worked correctly, 1.9.0-4, installs and works just fine in 18.04, which is still the current LTS version. Maybe I missed the point, but no ancient OS is required or I'd have just abandoned Conky by now. If it comes to that, I can probably convince yad in a 1 minute loop to do everything I'm doing with conky.

pre-1.0 conky
Can't see why you'd need that, since 1.9.0-4 works.

I'm not being demanding, folks. Fix it or not, as you wish. But I won't be spending the time to track it down as you suggest, unless and until I have no alternative that seems easier - like using the old version or teaching yad some new tricks. I just dropped in because I saw there were new posts in the thread.

BTW, anyone who wants to work-around this should see the original thread #320. Toward the end I outlined how to get a working deb securely, with gpg signature checked. The method can probably be adapted to distros outside the Debian family that use different package systems. There's also a patch there, with statements implying it worked and another implying it was slated to be incorporated into the the official code. But one or the other apparently is false.

I found one additional work-around for Openbox specifically. You can set OB to leave a 1 pixel wide margin around windows by default. Then, if you haven't done anything fancy to over-ride the default (& I do have occasions to, so this is not a complete substitute for pinning the old conky - just a supplement), you can click to the root window by pushing the pointer to any screen edge.

[Lew-Rockwell-Fan]

One more odd datum that might possibly provide a hint if anyone wanted to look into this:
While old* conky passes plain presses, lifts, and clicks from the right, left, or middle button, and almost all of those modified by any of the possible combinations of one or more of Ctrl, Shift, & Alt, on through to the root window, it will NOT pass alt-right or alt-left. Only a curiosity to me, but it might tell somebody something.

I don't expect to spend any time on this issue until my Ubuntu based system has new conky version to try, which might happen with the next LTS, due out in April I think. Or if I set up a PCLOS sytem, I might try on that. Old conky works fine for me.

*Old meaning 1.9.0 per "conky --version". Synaptic says conky-std is 1.9.0-4, and oddly won't give me properties on the 2 locked packages "conky" and "conky-all". I presume one of those is a meta.